Uncover The Monsters

Two-time Bram Stoker Award-winner Norman Prentiss continues to chart his own path through the different genres. His novels are poignantly moving, sometimes funny and often times bittersweet. Enjoy this wonderful collection that has a little something for everyone including horror, fantasy, action, and contemporary fiction.

Brendan has always been fascinated by the low-budget horror films of Bud Preston. Imagine his surprise when he moves to a new town and discovers a high school classmate is the daughter of his favorite director. Melissa Preston’s home contains exciting secrets about such strange films as THE STONE STAIRWAY and THE DUNGEON OF COUNT VERLOCK. But Brendan’s film-fan obsessions threaten to undermine his new friendship… before he can truly understand what it means to spend LIFE IN A HAUNTED HOUSE.

Do you see the point of the story, Nathan? We all cut parts of ourselves away, but we never lose them. Things stay with us–souvenirs with memories attached. We can’t always choose what to keep, what to throw away.

Nathan’s parents devised cautionary tales for him and his sister–gruesome stories about predatory cars racing along the “Big Street” at one end of their neighborhood, or dope fiends lurking in the woods behind their house and ready to plunge hypodermics into the skin of foolish young trespassers. These stories served their purpose during Nathan’s gullible childhood, essentially constructing an invisible fence around the yard and keeping the boy close to home where he’d be safe.

Such barriers are not so easy to discard in later life. As an adult, Nathan no longer believes his parents’ stories, and yet they still confine him. He lives cautiously, avoiding serious relationships, avoiding risk. But despite his efforts, something from his parents’ cautionary tales threatens to creep beneath that invisible border… and the enclosed yard might not be as safe and secure as it always seemed…

Because one of her fathers died when she was very young, much of Celia’s family knowledge comes from stories her surviving father narrates — road-trip adventures from the mid-80s that explore homophobia in a supernatural context. As she considers these adventures (a rescue mission aided by ghostly hallucinations; a secluded town of strangely shaped inhabitants; a movie star with a monstrous secret), Celia uncovers startling new truths about her family’s past.

“Beautifully un-categorizable but wholly delightful, Odd Adventures With Your Other Father is a heady mix of the surreal, the poignant, the scary, and the heartwarming. A gleeful mash-up of genres, highly recommended!”

Sandra picked up the dull, saddle-stitched book. The child on the cover laughed, a mischievous gleam in her eyes. Water stains on the front cover blurred the outline of some of the child’s teeth, making a few look sharp, like an animal’s. But the girl laughed, so everything was okay. Sandra didn’t realize THE BOOK OF BABY NAMES was a work of fiction. And that the stories inside were horrifying…

This mini-collection from Bram Stoker Award-winner Norman Prentiss contains six tales about sinister or endangered children, including two never-before-published stories, “The Baby Truck” and “The Well-Adjusted Child,” along with a new Foreword/Afterword that places all the tales in an additional disturbing context.

Other stories in this collection are: “The Albright Sextuplets,” “The Covered Doll,” “Homeschooled.” and “In the Best Stories… ”